Ok, so my mind is always turning and spinning with ideas. I have purchased several hex and counter wargames and love them. I also have gotten a few miniatures and a couple rule sets that are very fun as well, but there is one problem with miniatures. They can be very expensive to acquire your miniatures. Now, this is not to debate the cost of minis or how to obtain them. This is to talk about how you can use what you have to play the miniatures games you've always wanted without the minis. Well, for me I think I can do this.
So here is the plan, I'm going to use the counters from my favorite games and use them in place of the miniatures on the gaming table. In truth, I have many more counters from my hex and counter games than I have miniatures. The counters represent troops and equipment from many nations and time periods giving me great flexibility for my gaming choices. I know, that sounds absurd, but I'm hoping to convince you that this might not be a bad thing to try. I'll try and explain how this will work and why I'm going to do this.
I had not purchased anything war game related for many, many years. When I was younger, I once purchased a copy of MBT written by Jim Day and published by Avalon Hill. This was a great game that I was too young to fully appreciate. I did play with it using the basic rules and it made a great gateway into the bigger world of wargaming. During my MBT days, I was able to purchase 1/285 scale minis. I'm guessing these were pewter, and we played on the included maps as I didn't know anything about terrain tables at the time. I have noticed that the price on those have gone up as well, sigh.
Just a short while later, one of our friends brought over a box full of small plastic minis. These looked really cool and the box was awesome. It had these really cool looking armored guys fighting these really cool looking orcs using really cool looking weapons. My friend had introduced us to Warhammer 40k Epic scale and it was awesome. I won't go too much into that as I could spend a lot of time talking about failed painting jobs and such, but it was something that stayed in the back of my mind for many years. I'm just sad that the Warhammer Epic line is a small fraction of what it used to be, and alot more expensive than I remember.
However, most of my early gaming was roleplaying games that I played with my friends. Wargaming was something that didn't really materialize for me as much as I would have liked. Historical gaming definitely did not happen, but it was something that I would see in magazines and always thought it would be fun to try. But honestly, even then, it was pictures of ACW and Napoleon type of games. I don't think I knew you could do miniature gaming unless it had black powder or laser guns and chainsaws.
So now, many years later I tried to get back into roleplaying games. However, my area that liven does not have a very active gaming community. I watched plenty of Youtube videos for D&D and Pathfinder, but those are not very solo suitable. A friend of mine introduced me to a website called Boardgame Geek which had lots of games that were in a fantasy setting that could be played solo. Not roleplaying, but the chance to play with miniatures as some of these games have miniatures for the heroes and the monsters on 3D tile sets to make the dungeons. I didn't purchase any of these as something else on the website caught my attention. The wargames, specifically, Panzer 2ed.
After spending some time looking at games, I read about the company GMT and fell in love with their Combat Commander series of games. I ended up getting Combat Commander Europe and Pacific and love both games still. However, I still longed for tanks. As luck would have it, GMT announced they were doing the 2ed of Panzer and I read up on it. The article said it was based on an old version by Yaquinto games written by Jim Day, the gentleman that wrote MBT. Well one thing led to another and I waited for the release and pre-order of all three boxes, finally my tanks were coming back to me after many, many years. It wasn't modern, but hey, Tiger and Panther tanks are very cool. So after following the game and making some videos for it, I came across one day a player that used 1/285 scale tanks to play. They fit perfectly on the map board and made the game come to life. I immediately had flashbacks to my Epic scale wargaming days and wanted to purchase my own miniatures. At this point, one could go on and on about scale and which mini rules are best, but I've done that on Youtube already.
So I have now dabbled in 20 mm and 15 mm WW2 miniatures along with a couple rule sets and have come to realize that miniature gaming can be expensive and take up a lot of room. Normally, that would not be an issue for me, but now that I've been married for 12 years, I've learned that she doesn't like me spending money on "toys" and switching from rules to rules. In order to get the most value from my currently owned games and miniatures, I started to "hack" the rules I owned. I started playing my hex and counter game Panzer with my 15 mm tanks and loved it. I was able to play a realistic wargame with my miniatures combining my minis that I loved with a rule set that I love. With that being said, Chain of Command works out perfectly as I have the kit already purchased from other games and can play it without any additional purchases.
But let's talk about my next adventure in gaming and why I started to write this article. I plan on playing Chain of Command with my hex and counter pieces. So instead of playing a board game with miniatures, I'm going to play a miniatures game with board game pieces. So this is what I plan on doing, I'll be playing Chain of Command using the infantry and vehicle counters from Panzer. I'll be using those because the counters have minimal text and the infantry pieces have not text at all. I'll still use the terrain that I have however. After that, I'll try Battlegroup Kursk with counters as I have a much wider variety of counters for tanks than I have miniatures. This may even work for Flames of War as some of my counters represent squads and not just individual soldiers. For Chain of Command it will be difficult as I'll have to use dice for marking number of troops and shock, but I'm going to test it out share my results.
So wish me luck. I'll drag my wife along and later in the week in the Chit Chat, we'll share how it all went. Look for pictures here later as well. And always remember, move, shoot, communicate.
So here is the plan, I'm going to use the counters from my favorite games and use them in place of the miniatures on the gaming table. In truth, I have many more counters from my hex and counter games than I have miniatures. The counters represent troops and equipment from many nations and time periods giving me great flexibility for my gaming choices. I know, that sounds absurd, but I'm hoping to convince you that this might not be a bad thing to try. I'll try and explain how this will work and why I'm going to do this.
I had not purchased anything war game related for many, many years. When I was younger, I once purchased a copy of MBT written by Jim Day and published by Avalon Hill. This was a great game that I was too young to fully appreciate. I did play with it using the basic rules and it made a great gateway into the bigger world of wargaming. During my MBT days, I was able to purchase 1/285 scale minis. I'm guessing these were pewter, and we played on the included maps as I didn't know anything about terrain tables at the time. I have noticed that the price on those have gone up as well, sigh.
Just a short while later, one of our friends brought over a box full of small plastic minis. These looked really cool and the box was awesome. It had these really cool looking armored guys fighting these really cool looking orcs using really cool looking weapons. My friend had introduced us to Warhammer 40k Epic scale and it was awesome. I won't go too much into that as I could spend a lot of time talking about failed painting jobs and such, but it was something that stayed in the back of my mind for many years. I'm just sad that the Warhammer Epic line is a small fraction of what it used to be, and alot more expensive than I remember.
However, most of my early gaming was roleplaying games that I played with my friends. Wargaming was something that didn't really materialize for me as much as I would have liked. Historical gaming definitely did not happen, but it was something that I would see in magazines and always thought it would be fun to try. But honestly, even then, it was pictures of ACW and Napoleon type of games. I don't think I knew you could do miniature gaming unless it had black powder or laser guns and chainsaws.
So now, many years later I tried to get back into roleplaying games. However, my area that liven does not have a very active gaming community. I watched plenty of Youtube videos for D&D and Pathfinder, but those are not very solo suitable. A friend of mine introduced me to a website called Boardgame Geek which had lots of games that were in a fantasy setting that could be played solo. Not roleplaying, but the chance to play with miniatures as some of these games have miniatures for the heroes and the monsters on 3D tile sets to make the dungeons. I didn't purchase any of these as something else on the website caught my attention. The wargames, specifically, Panzer 2ed.
After spending some time looking at games, I read about the company GMT and fell in love with their Combat Commander series of games. I ended up getting Combat Commander Europe and Pacific and love both games still. However, I still longed for tanks. As luck would have it, GMT announced they were doing the 2ed of Panzer and I read up on it. The article said it was based on an old version by Yaquinto games written by Jim Day, the gentleman that wrote MBT. Well one thing led to another and I waited for the release and pre-order of all three boxes, finally my tanks were coming back to me after many, many years. It wasn't modern, but hey, Tiger and Panther tanks are very cool. So after following the game and making some videos for it, I came across one day a player that used 1/285 scale tanks to play. They fit perfectly on the map board and made the game come to life. I immediately had flashbacks to my Epic scale wargaming days and wanted to purchase my own miniatures. At this point, one could go on and on about scale and which mini rules are best, but I've done that on Youtube already.
So I have now dabbled in 20 mm and 15 mm WW2 miniatures along with a couple rule sets and have come to realize that miniature gaming can be expensive and take up a lot of room. Normally, that would not be an issue for me, but now that I've been married for 12 years, I've learned that she doesn't like me spending money on "toys" and switching from rules to rules. In order to get the most value from my currently owned games and miniatures, I started to "hack" the rules I owned. I started playing my hex and counter game Panzer with my 15 mm tanks and loved it. I was able to play a realistic wargame with my miniatures combining my minis that I loved with a rule set that I love. With that being said, Chain of Command works out perfectly as I have the kit already purchased from other games and can play it without any additional purchases.
But let's talk about my next adventure in gaming and why I started to write this article. I plan on playing Chain of Command with my hex and counter pieces. So instead of playing a board game with miniatures, I'm going to play a miniatures game with board game pieces. So this is what I plan on doing, I'll be playing Chain of Command using the infantry and vehicle counters from Panzer. I'll be using those because the counters have minimal text and the infantry pieces have not text at all. I'll still use the terrain that I have however. After that, I'll try Battlegroup Kursk with counters as I have a much wider variety of counters for tanks than I have miniatures. This may even work for Flames of War as some of my counters represent squads and not just individual soldiers. For Chain of Command it will be difficult as I'll have to use dice for marking number of troops and shock, but I'm going to test it out share my results.
So wish me luck. I'll drag my wife along and later in the week in the Chit Chat, we'll share how it all went. Look for pictures here later as well. And always remember, move, shoot, communicate.
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